Andy Bolton's 5 Tips to Improving Your Bench Press

07-15-2011, 08:36 AM

purebred

Andy Bolton's 5 Tips to Improving Your Bench Press

Very concise. Easy to comprehend. Great for those just starting to bench and those in search of improving their numbers.

1.Force Your Shoulders Back and Down
To approximate this feeling, hold a Jump Stretch Mini Band at arm's length in front of you and pull the band apart. The feeling as you pull the band apart will be one of tightness in your upper back. This is the feeling you want to re-create when you set up for the bench press. Maintain this position throughout your set.

2.Squeeze Your Glutes Tight
This is pretty self-explanatory, but some people struggle with it. If you have dormant glutes that need waking up, then try a couple of sets of glute bridges before you bench. When these become easy, switch to a single-leg variation

3.Get Your Feet Wide
Whether you bench flat footed or up on the balls of your feet, a wide stance will give you stability and balance that supersedes what you can achieve with a narrow stance. Think of how a pyramid is built and you will soon understand

4.Grip the Bar as Hard As You Can
The HARDER you grip the bar, the harder your triceps will flex. To supercharge this technique, "break the bar apart" as you bench. Try to feel like you are bending the bar (your left hand will try to rotate counter-clockwise and your right hand will try to rotate clockwise)

5.Bring the Bar to Your Lower Chest/Nipple Line
Nothing will mess up your shoulders faster than benching to your upper chest with your elbows flared. This is a horrible position. Instead, tuck your elbows on the descent and aim to touch the bar to your lower chest on each and every rep. Just remember to keep your forearms perpendicular to the floor at all times

If you practice these 5 simple points each and every time you Bench Press, you will soon have much better technique and more pressing power.

after about 4 months of trial and error of teaching myself to bench like this, I finally got it (used to bench flat footed and flat-backed/no-arch, with a healthy bounce lol), now I gotta get my numbers back up.

Are you using the grooves on the bar to measure yourself out? They are great indicators of hand placement/width.

Yeah, but you see the thing is I have a squat rack bench combo, so the bench part is detached from the rack. Which of course means I have to align the bench under the racks each time I bench. I made marks on the ground to try to help me align it right, but I need to make marks on the left side too to make sure everything is even. I'm 6 foot and have about a 73.5" wingspan.

im considered elite in everything there except squat and clean... where i am advanced..

im not even running anything right now....

Well these are just strength standards for weightlifters, not for powerlifters. So for instance, if you fall into the "Elite" category it assumes you probably either do a lot of powerlifting or have many, many years of serious training under your belt (or at least I infer that since the advanced category says the lifter has multiple years of training under their belts). These would be baselines, so lets say if you've been lifting for 8 years and have a lift falling under the novice/intermediate category, it means you're either crippled or have something (horribly) wrong with your training routine.

Anybody can answer this question. Would the "shoulders back and down" thing work well when regularly doing pushups. Never tried it, and my right shoulder kills me when i do pushups, wondering if this method would help???

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
-Jim Morrison